Hearth Fiend

Fire warms, lights and protects, yet now and then it turns on the people it serves: a lantern spills, a house burns, a hand is scorched in a familiar hearth. Usually that is bad luck. Sometimes it is a hearth fiend, a wicked native of elemental fire that, like a water weird, gets pulled into the misty dread realm by accident when certain spells are cast. It starts doing harm the moment it arrives, and adventurers fleeing that realm have occasionally carried one to other planes without knowing it.

A hearth fiend lives only in open flame, whether a candle, a torch or a campfire. Close examination has a 5% chance of revealing a spiteful face flickering in the fire. The creature can show its features plainly if it likes; otherwise it stays hidden from all but detect invisibility, detect magic or comparable spells. Among themselves hearth fiends talk through flicker, pop and crackle. Rarely they speak the common human tongue in a sharp, crackling voice laced with hisses and whispers, and listeners who do not already know the creature is there have a 75% chance of not recognizing the sound as speech at all.

Once per round the fiend hurls a bolt of flame, reaching 5 feet for every Hit Die it has, and damage set by the size of its fire (see Ecology). It makes a normal attack roll. A target hit must save vs. breath weapon: success halves the damage, while failure means full damage plus saving throws vs. magical fire for some or all possessions to avoid destruction. Items packed inside other items are safe unless their container is destroyed.

Only magical weapons can hurt it; an ordinary weapon does nothing and is itself destroyed unless it passes a save vs. magical fire. Lightning, electricity, heat and fire attacks cause no harm, and cold or ice spells do half damage. Spells that create water in bulk smother it for 1d4 damage per gallon thrown on it, but ordinary water, holy water included, does nothing and may simply be burned like any other fuel. Resist fire and flame walk protect against it, treating it as magical fire, and magic that sends creatures home or restricts them, works normally; protection from evil and dismiss fire elemental are examples.

Its whispers can charm one person at a time, but only someone who hears them and realizes the fire is talking to him. Anyone who knows the flame is magical or understands what it is becomes immune, so a party that unmasks the fiend is safe from the charm.

Three times a day it can release 2d6 ember eyes, innocent-looking sparks that float about at a walking pace for 1d6 rounds while the fiend sees and hears everything near them. Whatever would quench an ordinary flame (water from a cup, for example) or strip their magic (dispel magic) snuffs them out. An ember can be steered onto an object, which must save vs. normal fire or catch light; a person it lands on must save vs. breath weapon or take one point of damage.

Once an ember starts a fire, the fiend can move into it, which takes one round during which attacks on either fire can hit it. This is its only way to travel on the Prime Material Plane. It dislikes moving into a smaller fire, since that weakens it, but will do so to escape destruction. Entering fresh flames heals it completely, and its hit points are rerolled for the new size, while the old fire turns ordinary and can be put out normally.

Hearth fiends are solitary and delight in mischief and cruelty. A fire one inhabits cannot be put out by normal means and burns as long as there is fuel, and since its magical flame consumes stone and water as readily as wood or coal, fuel rarely runs short. Its favorite is living flesh, the more screaming and thrashing the better.

After moving into a new fire it waits several days, then begins whispering to someone unlikely to suspect it, such as a child, a barmaid or a dull-witted bully. The first bargains are small and even kind: a warm, bright inn in return for a little yew to burn. As trust grows, the deals darken, such as a promise not to burn supper, or the children, if a small animal is tossed in every month. Its ember eyes see what the tender cannot, so it also passes on troubling news. It might tell a wife that her husband is carrying on with the servant girl, then offer to scar the girl's face when next she leans close to the hearth; whether any affair existed hardly matters to it, and the wife may never learn the truth.

In time it demands real sacrifices: thinking beings lured within reach of its bolts, or embers carried to places where they can start new refuges. It frames these as favors, perhaps asking that an ember be carried to the fireplace of some neighbor who offended the tender with a promise merely to drive the family out. In truth it makes sure no one escapes, so it can savor them.

Any fire-based spell cast in the misty dread realm has a 1% chance per spell level of drawing a hearth fiend, which instantly settles into the nearest nonmagical fire. Its strength depends wholly on the size of that fire, as given on its size chart. On its home plane it is a weakling, at the mercy of even minor fire natives, notable only for its knack of sensing spells that tap elemental fire and riding them out. On the Prime Material it is far stronger, cunning and dangerous, and it will haggle hard to avoid banishment, lying throughout and plotting to destroy its bargaining partners at the first chance.

Such creatures can also be harnessed. A lich-king of a mist-shrouded realm is said to have bound several in a forge hotter than any before it, fed with living prisoners and reckless adventurers. It proved unusually good for crafting magic items, and rumor holds that each of his vampire secret police carries a weapon forged there. How he built it and held the fiends captive is unknown, but the blackest magic was surely involved.